The Outsiders: Origins
by CasintheTARDISin221B
Summary: I'm rubbish with summaries, but there's aliens and kind of magic and spies and Torchwood so... yeah. This was originally a group project in my English class, so each chapter is labeled with who in the group wrote that chapter.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Cameron

 ** _Forest Greenwood_**

It started as an ordinary hunting trip. Aaron and Ronaldo were hot on the trail of a white-tailed doe.

"There she is," Aaron said very softly, not wanting to scare the animal away. "You can take this one."

"Okay, I'll get her for you," Ronaldo whispered.

Aaron tried desperately not to make a comment on Ronaldo's previous luck catching women.

Suddenly the doe looked up, startled, and ran off into the woods.

Ronaldo turned to glare at Aaron. "That's the first deer we've seen all day. What'd you have to go and scare it away for?"

"I scared it away!?" Aaron exclaimed, "That was you!"

"What you think I stepped on a stick or something? No way! I distinctly heard you rustle some leaves at your feet"

"But do you see any leaves at my feet?" He asked, gesturing towards his feet, "I don't think so!" Suddenly a fire erupted around them. Aaron and Ronaldo both jumped back about a yard.

"What the?!" shouted Ronaldo.

"I don't know, but I'm kinda terrified to shout again," Aaron whispered.

"Let's get out of here!" Ronaldo yelled.

"Ronaldo, I don't know if you noticed, but there's a bit of a problem with that solution." Aaron said, gesturing annoyedly at the wall of flames that had appeared around the two of them.

"Aaron, what are we going to do?"

 ** _Torchwood Hub, about 30 seconds ago_**

"Crystal, picking up a huge energy spike about six miles out." Tosh immediately deferred to the Second-in-Command, seeing as the boys were out hunting down another rogue weevil. Crystal was right next to the computer in a flash, despite Tosh not having seen anyone in the main control center a second ago. Crys took one look at the screen and had grabbed her jacket, gun, and car keys and was out the door before Tosh could say "And it's not alien."

The road was a skinny winding dirt road out to the forest but Crystal took it at crazy speeds. She needed to get there and she needed to get there fast.

"Tosh how much farther do I have to the energy spike?" Crystal said into her earpiece.

"About two miles," she replied.

"Good because I got a feeling whoever is out there is in trouble."

 ** _Forest Greenwood, Ring of Fire_**

"Oh we are in so much trouble now," Aaron said backing, with Ronaldo, to the center of the circle.

The fire had started closing in on them and they were soon standing in the center of the circle hoping for a miracle, and it came.

 ** _15 seconds later_**

Crystal screeched to a halt and jumped out of the car. She ran towards the coordinates of the energy spike. Before she got there she saw the fire and bolted forward, praying to every deity she knew of that she wasn't too late. She saw the fire, slowly closing in towards the center of what must have been a perfect ring of flames, and acted on sheer instinct, throwing out her hand, not really expecting anything to happen. But the fire stopped drawing closer and pulled back quite a bit. It was still burning, but back at what must have been the original starting point.

 _What the…?_

Then she heard, barely audible over the roar of the flames, voices. Voices from inside the circle of flames. She swore softly under her breath, already straining to keep the fire in check.

However the heck she was doing that.

 ** _Inside the fire_**

Aaron heard a car pull up, and a door opening and shutting. Then, over the roar of the flames, some pretty creative cursing and a sudden rush of… not wind, exactly, but something powerful, and the fire jumped back to it's original starting point.

 _What the…?_

Then a bit more cursing, softer this time, like the person speaking was under a tremendous strain. And a voice, somehow cutting through the noise of the fire, crystal clear. "Can you hear me in there?"

 ** _Back on the other side of the fire_**

"Can you hear me in there?" Crystal shouted over the flames. She waited a moment then heard a muffled reply.

"Yes we can hear you"

"Ok whichever one of you is magic needs to put out the fire."

"What are you talking about? Help get us out of here!"

"One of you is magic and accidentally started the fire, so whoever it is needs to put it out."

"What are you talking about? Neither of us has magic. Get us out of here!"

"Listen to me! Let's pretend for just ONE SECOND that you actually believe I'm not crazy, alright? I want both of you to calm down and do exactly what I say, ok?"

"Ok"

"I want you to close your eyes and imagine the fire being put out." She waited, nothing happened. "Pretend it is actually happening. Watch the flames go out, imagine you can feel the air cooling off." she yelled over the roar of the flames. Out of nowhere, the fire was extinguished and out of the ashes staggered two worn out and slightly singed boys.

"Thank you for helping us get out of there. I thought we were goners for sure," said the first boy reaching out to shake my hand. "I'm Ronaldo."

"Crystal," she replied reaching out to shake his hand.

"Yes thank you so much," Said the second also reaching out with his hand. "I'm Aaron"

She shook his hand and said, "You really shouldn't be thanking me. It was one of you who put out the fire, after all"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I didn't do anything. It was all you guys."

They both stared at her blankly.

"I'll only explain this once so pay attention. There is a force of nature that only certain people are born with. It allows them to do unnatural things like, for instance, starting a fire without trying and miraculously putting it out. Torchwood calls it Psy-kinetic energy. Most people call it magic." Both boys still looked extremely confused. "You know what, how about I just show you."

"Ok. That sounds good, because I am still not getting this very well." said Aaron

"So what I am going to do is have you try to use 'magic' again. Ronaldo isn't it?"

"Yes that is right."

Crystal picked up a small pebble. "What I want you to do is try to lift this pebble," As Ronaldo reached out to pick it up, Crystal rolled her eyes and quickly blocked his hand. "With your mind. Do the same as with the fire. See it really happening." Nothing happened. "Ok, that probably answers that question. But if he doesn't do it either you can try again. Aaron isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"I want you to try to do the same thing." Suddenly the pebble flew out of her hand and into the sky, hovering at about the height of the lowest branches of the pine tree they were sitting under.

"What the?" The pebble came crashing to the ground. Well, as much as a pebble dropped from a height of roughly 10 feet can crash. "Did I just do that?"

"Yes, that was you."

"How did I do that?"

"I told you already and I'm not going to explain it again"

"Come on I don't get this at all," he said. "How come I can do these weird things that no one else can?"

"I've already explained this, ok? I can explain it a lot better at Torchwood, so, if you want to know, come with me." she said.

Suddenly, Crystal's earpiece beeped at her. She turned it back on and heard alarms in the background, as well as… was that gunfire? "Tosh, what's going on?"

"Crystal, we need you back here, now! Torchwood is under attack!"


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Aubrey

Crystal let out a short string of words that Aaron assumed were swear words, but since none of them were in English, he wasn't sure.

Scratch that, Crystal's tone made it pretty clear she wasn't hearing good news. "Tosh, where are Jack and Owen? Is Ianto with them?"

Aaron wondered exactly who they were.

"Alright, Tosh. Find some cover, and preferably some ammo. I'll be there in three minutes. Hang on!"

As Crystal started ushering them towards the black van she arrived in, Ronaldo planted his feet and refused to budge. "No. No, you tell us what's going on here first."

Crystal looked like she was about ready to either punch Ronaldo or shoot him, still obviously very on edge. "Alright, you want the short version?" She practically spat the words at him, clenching her jaw, obviously trying to stop a long string of profanities from leaving her mouth. "I work for a secret government agency that deals with alien threats and _right_ now my teammate is pinned down in our home base with _very_ little ammunition and _very_ little backup, and you have about _two_ seconds to get your whiny rear end _into_ that van or I _will_ stun-gun you and _throw_ you in the back of said van." She glanced at Aaron, who was getting more confused by the second. "And that goes for you, too."

Both boys scrambled into the backseat in record time.

Crystal started the van and pulled out onto the dirt road. Aaron realized that this road led directly to the bay. "How do you plan to get to the bay in three minutes? It's almost six miles from here!" Then he got a good look at the speedometer. And really wished he hadn't looked. "Are you freaking insane!? These speeds on this road is near suicidal!"

"The operative word in that sentence being 'near'!" Crystal replied as they rounded a hairpin turn that nearly tipped the van over. Aaron decided to close his eyes before he nearly threw up again.

 _It's just one of those stupid flight simulator things. Yeah, that's why we're almost spinning a 180 and nearly falling out of the seats. Just a flight… Oh, who do I think I'm bloody kidding, we're going to die!_

Crystal, on the other hand, was laughing like a maniac. "Oh, I forgot just how bloody brilliant this is! The rest of the team NEVER lets me drive this fast!"

"Gee," muttered Aaron to himself, feeling nauseous again, "I can't imagine why."

Ronaldo rolled down the window to hurl, but nearly got snatched out of the car by the sheer wind force. He quickly decided to roll said window back up. Crystal just laughed and swung around another hairpin turn.

 ** _2 minutes later_**

Crystal walked into the Torchwood Hub warily, gun at the ready. "Tosh?" She called out, voice trembling slightly, "Are you here?" Silence was all they heard as Crystal's question echoed around the seemingly empty control room. Suddenly she heard a clatter from somewhere near Tosh's workstation.

"Crystal?" Oh, lord, she had never been so happy to hear the voice of Dr. Toshiko Sato, scared and broken as it sounded.

Crystal immediately darted up the stairs and was at Tosh's side in an instant, looking for blood or bruises in the dim light. "It's okay, Tosh, it's me. Just me. What happened here?"

Tosh whimpered slightly and pointed towards Jack's office. Crystal got the message. They weren't alone.

Crystal took out her gun, and decided to wait for the culprit to show themselves.

Whoever had done this to her beloved Torchwood was going to suffer.

Lila couldn't believe her luck. She was actually inside Torchwood. _Torchwood._ Oh, she was going to become thieving _legend_ for this stunt. However, as she stepped out the door and back into the main control center, she started to regret her choice of targets. First, someone started shooting at her, then she was swooped up by what felt rather like a large bird, but was making screeching sounds completely out of character for any bird. As the lights came up, she realized she was dangling about a hundred feet above the ground… from the claws of a pterodactyl. The girl shooting at her cursed and put the gun away.

"Just hold on!" the girl shouted, then the strangest thing happened. She started singing.

 _We dreamers have our ways_

 _of facing rainy days,_

 _and somehow we survive._

 _We keep the feelings warm,_

 _protect them from the storm,_

 _until our time arrives._

The girl's voice reverberated throughout the space, clear and beautiful, albeit a bit shaky and nervous. The pterodactyl began slowing down just slightly, and Lila felt an overwhelming sense of calm wash over her. Everything would be fine, somehow.

 _Then one day the sun appears!_

 _And we come shining_

 _through those lonely years!_

 _I made it through the rain,_

 _I kept my world protected._

 _I made it through the rain,_

 _I kept my point of view._

 _I made it through the rain,_

 _and found myself respected_

 _By the others who_

 _got rained on, too,_

 _and made it through._

The pterodactyl started spiraling slowly downwards, and the girl's voice lost some of the shakiness in it. She kept singing, and slowly but surely, Lila was getting closer and closer to the ground.

 _When friends are hard to find,_

 _and life seems so unkind,_

 _sometimes you feel afraid._

 _Just aim beyond the clouds,_

 _and rise above the crowds_

 _and start your own parade._

' _Cause when I chased my fears away,_

 _that's when I knew_

 _that I could finally say…_

 _I made it through the rain,_

 _I kept my world protected._

 _I made it through the rain,_

 _I kept my point of view._

 _I made it through the rain,_

 _and found myself respected_

 _By the others who_

 _got rained on, too,_

 _and made it through._

 _And made it through._

 _And made it through._

As the girl's voice trailed off, lingering softly on that last note, the pterodactyl set Lila gently on the floor and coasted to land in front of the girl who had been singing. She affectionately patted its head, and the pterodactyl flew off, up and around the main tower in the center of the room. Both of the girls it had been standing in front of let out a huge sigh of relief. Lila could have sworn she heard the girl who had been singing muttering about "Bloody Jack Harkness and his bloody 51st century hypnosis tricks," but she must have misheard, because this was the 21st century.

Suddenly, the door opened and three men rushed in, all holding guns. "Tosh," said the one in front, pretty obviously the leader, "We got the distress call, what happened? Are you okay?" The small Asian woman who had been shooting at Lila before the other girl had gotten there nodded weakly.

"Owen," said the girl who had been singing, "She's been shot. Nothing immediately fatal, but she's bleeding pretty bad, here, come help me move her over to the table." The guy in the leather jacket - the one who obviously didn't get nearly enough time outside, he was pale as death - rushed over and immediately put pressure on 'Tosh's' wound, trying to staunch the bleeding. He and the girl managed to get her onto one of the desks, rapidly cleared off by the third guy who had come in - dang, not many guys can pull off a suit _that_ well and not look seriously uncomfortable. 'Owen' had pulled a portable first-aid kit out of the pocket of his jacket and was currently cursing avidly at the fact that he didn't have any anesthetic on hand.

"Tosh," he said, a warning in his tone, "This is gonna hurt like heck."

"Really, Owen? More than the bullet wound?"

"Fair point." He started stitching up the wound, 'Tosh' hissing slightly in pain every time the needle pierced through her skin. When 'Owen' had tied off and cut the thread, he picked up a bottle of vodka that had been sitting on a nearby desk. "and this is gonna hurt like -" here he said a word Lila was technically not allowed to repeat in any company, polite or otherwise. He carefully poured a bit of the 80-proof onto the wound, and Lila could see 'Tosh' trying so very hard not to scream. She obviously had feelings for this 'Owen' guy, but Lila couldn't tell if he felt the same way.

The only problem… Lila had forgotten about Miss Dinosaur Whisperer over there. She turned her head about 45 degrees to the right and was suddenly staring straight down the barrel of an old-style, but obviously new, 6-shot revolver. "Oh. Right. You." That didn't get a reaction. "Thanks for the help with the whole dinosaur thing and all." Still had a gun pointed at her. "I'll just… go now?"

From behind her came another voice. "I don't think so, princess." Then a stinging pain in her neck and the world spun slowly into black.

"Owen!" Gwen exclaimed, "Was that really necessary?"

"She broke into the bloody Hub! Yeah, it was!"

"Owen," Gwen stated calmly, "What I meant was, take a good look at the label on that needle."

Owen did so, and swore when he realized he'd used the wrong sedative. The girl would be out for at least an hour, possibly more.

Crystal had to seriously fight making a snide remark about that. Mainly because she had been spending way too much time around Jack recently and said remark was wildly inappropriate with the two kids present. Then she actually remembered the two kids present.

Except, when Crystal turned to look, only Ronaldo was standing there. "Where's Aaron?"

"I don't know." Ronaldo's voice was shaking, but more than that. His heart was beating extremely fast, elevated blood pressure levels, every single sign of a lie.

Crystal's hand rested lightly on her stun-gun holster. "I'll ask again. Where's Aaron? And _don't_ bother lying this time. I _can_ tell."

Ronaldo raised an eyebrow, suddenly seeming a lot more confident. "Oh, yeah? What, you gonna give me a polygraph test?"

"We don't need to," Jack replied, "We have Crystal."

"Oh, what, and she can tell exactly when someone's lying? She psychic or something?"

Crystal shot him a look that could freeze Hawaii. Twice. "Right now your heart rate is about 125 BPM, which could be attributed to the shock, but your blood pressure is elevated, your pupils are just slightly too wide, your breathing is slightly ragged and definitely too fast, all the signs, in short, that a polygraph measures to tell when you're lying, and those are just the easy ones. And yeah, I am, slightly."

Ronaldo couldn't have looked more dumbstruck if she had hit him.

"You remember that very brief explanation of my job I gave you? About how we deal with alien threats?" Ronaldo nodded, not seeing where this was going. "They aren't always threats." Crystal's eyes flickered golden for a second, then back to deep-sea blue.

Now all that swagger just seemed to drain out of Ronaldo, replaced by stark fear.

"Okay, I'm going to ask one more time. Where. Is. Aaron?" Crystal's voice stayed icy calm, but she allowed her eyes to flicker to pure gold on every emphasised syllable this time, to give the kid an idea of just how pissed off she was right now.

"I- I honestly don't know. The people who hired me, they have a ton of hiding places, and nobody tells me anything. I don't know which one he's at. But I can get you in once we find it." Now some of the color was coming back to Ronaldo's face, fear being pushed out by determination.

"And why on god's bloody earth should we trust you?" Owen had some understandable issues with this plan.

"Aaron was my friend. All anyone told me to do was gather information. I never wanted to hurt anybody, and believe me, these people will hurt him." Ronaldo's voice was like frozen steel. "I want to help stop that from happening."

Silence echoed through the hub.

Jack was the first to react, obviously working off pure instinct at the moment if the nature of his order was anything to go by. "Tosh, see if you can isolate the energy signature of that spike we recorded, maybe we can track it."

Owen gave Jack a look that managed to say a whole lot, most of it swearing, in less than a second.

"Right, I'll do it." Crystal was up at Tosh's workstation before anyone could blink, forestalling the inevitable argument. Considering that she could type faster than the whole team combined, nobody argued. "Oh, by the way, Jack, the sonic resonance theory was completely accurate."

Jack allowed himself a small grin of triumph. Owen glared and flipped him off, then handed Ianto a ten-pound note. Ianto grinned. "I told you, Owen, never bet against Jack." Owen stalked off downstairs to his lab.

"Sonic resonance theory?" Ronaldo was understandably confused. Ianto decided to take some small measure of pity on the kid and explain.

"The sonic resonance theory is based off of the idea that sound waves affect everything around us, and if you can hit exactly the right frequency or set of frequencies you could do anything with it. The only problem is, we've never had an opportunity to test the full effects of it before, due to the fact that we didn't have the technology to replicate the range and combinations you would need.

"Then we met Crystal. Her spaceship had crashed in the bay, and we went to investigate. There had only been two survivors of the crash, Crystal and her little brother. We found her desperately trying to staunch the bleeding from a very deep cut in his arm. But we got there too late. Owen did everything he could, but… whatever made that cut had hit a major artery. There was only so much he could do."

"Wow." Ronaldo had known that something bad had happened in Crystal's past. Heck, she swore more than Owen, and that much anger didn't come without a reason. But he hadn't even imagined something like that. "That's…" He couldn't find the words.

"Yeah. We all did what we could, but she closed off after that. Wouldn't speak, barely ate. Nobody could get through to her. Except Jack. Nobody understood why, at first, but she would talk to him, a bit. Little by little, we got the story of how she ended up here. And no," Ianto immediately stopped Ronaldo before he could even ask, "I'm not going to explain that part. That's Crystal's story to tell, not mine. But little by little, she started adjusting to Earth. She started learning the language. From Owen, actually, which everyone admits wasn't the best idea.

"But the thing that pulled her back, the one thing that really got through to her, was music. Sometimes me and Jack would come back a bit late from a job - or the bar, depending on his mood that night - and she'd be sitting in her room, singing the saddest, sweetest songs. The sound would just carry throughout the entire Hub, and it was…" Here Ianto trailed off, unable to find the words, not sure there _were_ words to describe those songs. Ronaldo seemed to get the general idea, though. "You could almost _hear_ what she was thinking, feeling. You wanted to cry with her. Jack had the idea that she might be unintentionally using a sonic resonance technique, that her natural voice could do what no machine we've found yet could."

Here, Crystal cut in. "And it's a bloody good thing he was right, too, because the only other way to get Myfanwy to do what we say has…" She smirked, "other effects." Everyone cracked up laughing at that, the silence that had pervaded the room shattering in an instant. Ronaldo looked understandably confused again.

Owen, who had come back up to the main floor sometime during the story, refused to explain further than "Inside joke, mate. Believe me, you probably wouldn't understand if we did tell you."

Suddenly, Crystal let out a shout of triumph. The laughing immediately cut off. Back down to business.

"I found where they're holding him!" Crystal yelled, "He's in an abandoned warehouse down by the docks."

She glanced back at the screen, and her face paled immediately. She swore softly under her breath. "And there are explosives."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Kloey & Aubrey

Everyone had forgotten about Lila for the moment, assuming that she was asleep, and she had hidden in a medical-looking room down a small flight of stairs. She couldn't really hear much of the conversation, other than the obvious bits.

The silence that pervaded the room as a story was told. A sad story. Lila could feel the tone of it, even if she couldn't hear the story itself.

The laughter, breaking the tension as easily as one might shatter a thin layer of ice, as someone cracked a joke.

A shout of triumph, they'd found whatever they were looking for.

And then, a strange tension slowly crept through the room, as some discovery sank in. Something bad. Lila could almost feel… fear. The unknown tension was fear and… rage. No, more than that. Helplessness, and frustration, punctuated and emphasized by a rather long string of profanities, not even all in english, from the guy they'd called Owen (Lila would recognize that London accent anywhere). Something was very wrong. Something even the famed Torchwood couldn't do anything about.

Then she heard footsteps. Owen was coming back down, and Lila had nowhere to hide. She crouched down behind the table, but she knew that wouldn't last long. As Owen came around the table, Lila edged around to the side near the stairs. After making sure he was engrossed in the computer screen and a glass of alcohol, she quickly bolted up the stairs.

However, she'd forgotten about the dang pterodactyl. It landed in front of her, screeching, blocking her way. The girl who had been singing before looked up.

"Myfanwy, stop it. She's not food, and she currently poses no direct threat to the team."

 _That voice._

Lila felt like she'd heard it somewhere before. Like she _knew_ that voice, knew it so well, and-

Lila shook her head, suddenly disoriented. Owen caught her as she almost fell back down the stairs.

"Yeah, took us all a while to get used to that, too." Owen gently brought her back down and laid her on the table she'd been lying on. "Just stay there until your ears stop ringing." Then something clicked. Lila could almost _see_ the lightbulb go on over his head. "Wait a minute. How are you awake? That sedative should have knocked you out for at least an hour." Lila smirked a bit and turned to show him the minute patch of circuitry on her neck that had created a holographic illusion so that he had _thought_ he stuck her with the needle, but had actually hit the circuitry. Enough of the sedative had gotten into her bloodstream to knock her out for a minute, but most of it had been siphoned off by the circuit, which she now peeled off her neck and dropped into the trash.

Owen gave her a weird look.

"One use only." Lila sat up, rubbing the back of her neck where the circuit had been. "And it seriously hurts when you take it off."

Owen moved to knock her out again, but the girl from before caught his arm before the needle could touch her. Which was weird, because Lila was sure that a second ago, said girl had been calming the pterodactyl down. Definitely nowhere near what Lila now mentally referred to as the med bay, for lack of a better word.

"Owen," She said, "Wait. She broke into the Hub. Maybe she can help us."

"Crystal, _she broke into the Hub._ What in the world makes you think she'd _want_ to help us?"

"The fact that, for one thing, she's not freaking out. Look at her, Owen. Do you recognize that look? I know I do, because that's the exact same look Gwen had when she first walked through that door, isn't it? The exact same look you had, and Tosh. Do you remember when Jack asked me if I'd like to join Torchwood? I had the exact. Same. Look. That's how I know she'll help us, Owen. Because she's one of us. One of those people who know there is more to the universe than us. The only difference is that we're lucky enough to have seen it." Lila wasn't precisely sure when Crystal's eyes had switched from deep-sea blue to pure metallic gold, but Owen seemed to take it in stride. Lila guessed it was normal, then.

The guy who had come in first, however, the one wearing an old-style RAF coat, was heading for the door. Everyone looked up as the door opened. Crystal was in front of him, blocking his way, before anyone could even blink. "Jack, you can't. I did a full scan, every entrance is lined with explosives. You can't get in."

'Jack' held her gaze with a frozen glare. "I'll be fine, we both know I can handle explosions." He walked past Crystal, once again heading for the door.

"But Aaron can't."

That stopped Jack dead in his tracks. He obviously hadn't thought of that.

"You're not the only one at risk this time, Jack." Crystal's voice had taken on that almost melodic tone again. Jack seemed almost unaffected by it, but he obviously got the idea through his thick skull that this 'Aaron' guy was in danger, too. Honestly, the more time Lila spent around the male species, the more she wanted to smack the lot of them upside the head. Preferably with a heavy book. Or possibly a gun handle.

Lila didn't have a particularly high opinion of the male species.

At any rate, Jack had rather reluctantly gone back to the main control center and Crystal was back down in the med-bay having a rather heated conversation with Owen. Lila couldn't exactly hear what they were saying but she knew it was probably about her. After a few more seconds, Crystal walked over to Lila.

"Okay, Owen here simply wants to Retcon you and forget about this whole thing, but our friend's being held in a warehouse not far from here and not a one of us can get in without blowing it up. You managed to get into this place without setting off a single alarm. We need your help." Lila was amazed. The famed Torchwood Institute needed _her_ help?

"Or, if you don't want to help, I can arrange for you to forget all about this place. You'll wake up tomorrow morning with absolutely no memory of this and you can get on with your life."

Lila was a bit wary, but a chance to work with Torchwood? Not to mention pull off the greatest break-in ever! Still, if even Torchwood couldn't manage it, was it really within the parameters of Lila's skills? She didn't know if she could even pull it off.

But when had that ever stopped her?

"Alright, you said you had scans of this place? Let me take a look."

* * *

Lila was just outside the warehouse, and just now realizing that her mile-wide competitive streak might just have gotten her into serious trouble. She hissed under her breath into the commlink she'd been temporarily issued.

"When you said the system was on a hairpin trigger, I didn't think you meant literally. This thing was cobbled together out of spare parts and junk. Oh, and did I mention the cubic inch of C4 covered in explosive putty at the heart of it all? I have no f****** idea how to disarm this thing."

Still, Lila had always had a knack for seeing every individual piece of a machine in almost a mental blueprint. She disconnected a couple wires, spliced two more together, and very carefully disconnected the tripwires. Then she flipped a switch and very carefully removed the explosive, quickly and quietly placing it a considerable distance from the mechanism. She let out a sigh of relief that that had actually worked.

"Okay. I'm in."

As Lila snuck into the abandoned warehouse, she heard a quiet ticking sound. As she looked into the other room, she saw Aaron strapped to some sort of ticking device. Suddenly she realized that it was an extremely complex bomb, and it was strapped to Aaron's chest!

"D***"

She had to get the bomb off of him and quickly before they both blew to pieces. As she was studying the wires Aaron regained consciousness.

"Hey," Lila said. "You awake?"

"Yeah," said Aaron.

"Good", said Lila, "Then you can help me get this bomb off of you without it blowing us both up."

"Wait,"said Aaron. "What bomb?"

"The one strapped to your chest that has only five more minutes until we both explode," said Lila.

"What?!" Aaron exclaimed.

"Chill out, i'm trying to defuse at least the straps, and hold still or I might accidently blow your head off."

"Well then hurry!" Aaron replied.

"Shut up," Lila said

Finally, with thirty seconds to spare she was able to unstrap the bomb from Aaron's chest. She quickly dropped it into the vacuum-sealed container she had brought, where it detonated harmlessly. She breathed a deep sigh of relief.

"Hallelujah," said Aaron.

"Oh my God, that was so freakin' close," said Lila.

Crystal's voice came through loud and clear over Lila's commlink.

"I'll say!"

Wait a minute. Lila had turned the commlink off when she was sneaking in. Lila turned around to see Crystal casually leaning against the doorframe Lila had just defused.

"Were you standing there the whole time?"

"Well, if you disconnected the wrong wire somebody had to save your sorry rear end. But no, I got held up slightly. I only just got here."

"Held up how?"

Ronaldo walked in, looking extremely annoyed and slightly offended.

"Apparently, the morons guarding this place aren't quite as trusting as I'd thought. I had to dig through the entire car before I found my ID, and even then I ended up bribing them ten bucks to let us through, and I'm pretty sure Crystal pulled some Jedi mind-trick thing on the ones in the parking lot."

"For the last time, it's not a Jedi mind-trick! It was minor psychic ability combined with a simple sonic resonance pattern."

"Says you! They waved us through with barely even a pause, and didn't even look at the ID card. They didn't even look at the dang van. I'm calling Jedi skills right there."

"I give up, I give up! You're worse than Owen in regards to fandom references."

"Says the girl who was talking to a pterodactyl in perfectly fluent Vulcan!"

"Says the boy who recognized that as Vulcan!"

Ronaldo looked a bit annoyed, but mostly amused.

"Oh, no. I had nothing to do with it, you can blame Aaron for that one. He's obsessed with that show, and I swear he speaks every language on it."

Owen's voice came over the commlink.

"If you three are done geeking out, can we please head back to the Hub now? It's been a very long day, I need either coffee or scotch, and Jack's cooking dinner tonight."

Crystal immediately dashed out of the warehouse as soon as Owen mentioned that Jack was cooking, making a beeline for the Torchwood van. Aaron, Lila and Ronaldo exchanged a slightly confused, but mostly excited and amused, look, and immediately ran after her.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Aubrey & Victor

The team quickly found out why Crystal had been in such a hurry to get back to the hub. Jack could seriously cook! Ronaldo joined Torchwood - unofficially, mainly because Jack had absolutely zero idea where all of the paperwork was - And Lila agreed to work with them on occasion. Crystal offered to help Aaron learn to control his abilities, mentioning that she had to learn similar techniques when she first came here, so as not to use her voice's natural sonic resonance properties constantly, as it really was fairly disconcerting to most people when she did.

They also found out that Crystal had some minor Psy-kinetic talent as well. Nowhere near Aaron's level, of course, but, when combined with certain sonic resonance techniques, definitely a force to be reckoned with. At this point, it mainly consisted of fully inhuman speed - which explained how she was calming down a pterodactyl one second, yelling at Owen in the medbay the next second, and blocking Jack's path to the door in the next - and a knack for altering existing Psy-kinetic energy fields (which basically meant that she could keep Aaron from burning down the Hub when he was practicing). In time, however, she thought she might even be able to hone her abilities to the point of creating small, basic energy fields - simple telepathy and possibly even minor telekinetic skills.

The four of them quickly grew to become great friends, and eventually even started their own little team. The jokes about what they should name said team were obviously all parts of the punchline to some larger reference, but only Crystal and the rest of Torchwood seemed to understand it.

"What about… Excalibur?"

"No, Blizzard!"

"How about -"

Owen was sharply cut off by Gwen slapping a hand over his mouth at this point, sending both Jack and Crystal into fits of laughter, and even eliciting a chuckle from Tosh. The rest of the team figured that the rest of that sentence was probably something they didn't want to know about.

"What about Enterprise? Or Runaways?" Ronaldo and Lila shot Aaron an annoyed glare, and Crystal started laughing again.

"How about… The Outsiders? You know, as in 'outside' normal society?" Lila chipped in.

"You know, I kinda like that."

"Yeah, sounds pretty cool.

"Okay, I like the sound of that. Has a nice ring to it. 'Outsiders'. Fits, too, because, well," Crystal gestured to the group in general, then to each individual person. "We've got a reluctant spy, a thief with a thing for challenges, a guy who can start a fire with his mind, and an alien from the other side of the galaxy. Yeah, I think 'Outsiders' fits perfectly."

"Crystal," Aaron said, a bit nervous but mostly curious, "just out of curiosity, where are you from? Like, what planet?"

"Um… I don't think you could pronounce it. The simplified version would be _T'rilliau*_ , but even that's probably a bit difficult."

"Not really. It sounds a bit like Romulan. T'rilau, right?"

Crystal tried not to laugh as Aaron almost mangled the name. "Pretty close, for a first try. I'm sure you'll get it with a bit of practice."

"Speaking of practice, I think we've still got time for a training session before we hit the hay. Wanna head downstairs?"

"Sounds good to me. You guys cool up here?" Both Ronaldo and Lila nodded, gesturing to the two of them to head off.

"Yeah, the quicker you guys get to mental training the quicker I don't have to worry about waking up with the room frozen over or a literal firewall in the doorway 'cause Mr. Magic over there had a rough night."

Ronaldo had a bit of a problem with the room assignments at the moment, but - though he'd never admit this out loud - he wouldn't dare leave Aaron alone at night. Aside from the nightmares, it had only been a couple of weeks since Aaron had been kidnapped by his former employers, and Ronaldo was still paranoid that it might happen again. No one but Ronaldo knew that he slept with a knife under his pillow for this exact reason. Aaron was his best friend, and he'd be damned if he was going to let him go through that again. But the Hub was the first place that Ronaldo had felt safe in a long time. And maybe, just maybe, with a little time and a bit of patience, things could get back to normal again.

Well, as normal as things ever got when you were an Outsider.

 _*t-RHIL-ee-ow, roll the R slightly_


End file.
